General Instrument Corporation

Irdeto Access, Inc.

Hyundai Electronics America, Inc.

Compression Labs, Inc.

R Padmanabha Rao

Amanda L Chin

Paolo L Siccardo

Gilbert Levesque

Martin D Elsbach

An architecture for distributing digital information to subscriber units wherein selection from among multiple digital services is accomplished by transmitting a tuning command from a subscriber unit to an intermediate interface. The intermediate interface selects the desired service from a broadband network and transmits it to the subscriber unit over a bandwidth-constrained access line. The bandwidth-constrained access line may be implemented with existing infrastructure, yet the subscriber unit may access a wide variety of digital information available on the broadband network. Universal broadband access is thus provided at low cost. Output bandwidth of broadcast equipment may also be optimized.

Video pedestal network

An architecture for distributing digital information to subscriber units wherein selection from among multiple digital services is accomplished by transmitting a tuning command from a subscriber unit to an intermediate interface. The intermediate interface selects the desired service from a broadband network and transmits it to the subscriber unit over a bandwidth-constrained access line. The bandwidth-constrained access line may be implemented with existing infrastructure, yet the subscriber unit may access a wide variety of digital information available on the broadband network. Universal broadband access is thus provided at low cost.

A video data stream analyzer modifies an input digital video signal so that the resulting output digital signal can be optimally compressed by a digital video encoder. The video data stream analyzer eliminates redundancy in the input video signal, and reorganizes the input video signal so that the spatial and temporal redundancy is increased. In addition, the video data stream analyzer generates side channel information that is supplied to the video encoder. The side channel information tells the video encoder whether vertical frame-based filtering or vertical field-based filtering is preferable. Additional side channel information specifies the order and duration of the display of the fields after decoding and this information preferably is encoded with the video signal. The video data stream analyzer provides scan detection of the incoming video digital data, and automatically and reliably detects scene cuts, repeated fields, and mixed-field frames in the incoming digital video data in real time independent of the video source. The video data stream analyzer modifies the input video data stream by dropping repeated fields and replacing a frame with a scene cut with a frame having identical fields for video, cartoon, telecine video sources as well as arbitrary combinations of these video sources.

Analyzer and methods for detecting and processing video data types in a

A statistical multiplexer selectively passes packets of encoded data from a plurality of encoders to a communication channel so as to maximize the quality of the encoded data. The statistical multiplexer determines what fraction of the communication channel capacity should be allocated to an application so as to optimize the quality of the decoded signals of the applications processed by the statistical multiplexer. A table is stored in a memory of the statistical multiplexer that has an entry for each unit of encoded data that can be transmitted over the communication channel in a predetermined time interval. The statistical multiplexer accesses each entry in the table to obtain a pointer, e.g., an address, to an encoder that can transmit the next unit of encoded data to the communication channel. The statistical multiplexer dynamically adjusts the data compression rate for each variable rate application so that the quality of all the encoded data streams are optimized over a window, and builds a new table that reflects the adjusted rates. In one application, the table is broken into a static table and a dynamic table. The static table is built at configuration time and while one dynamic table is being used for a window, a new dynamic table is built for the next window.

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Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

R Padmanabha Rao